The Things Every Child Needs For The Best Start in Life

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As soon as you find out that you are expecting a baby, there is a sudden urge to want to care for this little baby at all costs. From the things that you eat and drink to what you physically do in pregnancy, they are all done with the child in mind. So it is completely natural that when the baby is born, that you will want to do everything that you can to make sure that they have the best start in life and can have the best life that you can give them.

Those early years of learning are so vital for little ones. When babies are born it is reported that their brain is around a quarter size of a fully grown adult brain. But by the time they are three years old, just three years old, it is nearly the same size as a fully formed adults brain (around 90%). So those years are so important as they do so much learning and growing in the time before they are even in school. Here are some of the things that you can be doing to help your child to have the best possible start off in life.

Encourage Interaction

Most of the things that a child will grow from and learn from are going to be the things that they learn in the home. Later down the line it can be from childcare or preschools, but a lot of what goes on will happen at home.

Social interaction is incredibly important for your child’s development. Your child’s interactions with you and family members are their building blocks to effective interaction in the real world. He starts to learn how to read social cues and appropriately react to things.

Language is also impacted by interaction. Your child picks up on language by interacting. The more you talk with your child and involve them in daily activities, the more they pick up on vocabulary and grammar.

So make sure that you are getting involved with their play and are getting down on their level to play with them. Respond quickly to what they show or offer you. Talk to them and encourage a conversation, as much as is possible, as well as being present in your child’s life.

Physical Affection

When children see and benefit from physical affection is shows to them that they are loved and are safe and cared for. This is something that is vital for positive emotional growth. It can be harder for some than others to be physically affectionate with their children, but hugs can work wonders, as well as holding them when you feed them (when they’re an infant), to looking into their eyes, and being gentle with them.

My kids will probably be the ones that eventually say, “Mom, stop kissing me!” I can’t stop loving on my kids. But they have in turn started to be very affectionate too!

Physical affection is so important for your child’s emotional development. It not only helps them feel loved, but can help them learn how to self-regulate.

Safe and Healthy Home

With all of that learning and growing that they have to do in those early years, they are going to need a safe place to rest, as well as lots of food to eat to keep them healthy and strong.

To start off with, you do need to child-proof your home, which can be more than just getting stair gates. Things like cleaning products, paint, and plants can all be hazardous to little ones, especially at the point that they want to put everything in their mouth.

People often neglect actually teaching their children to be safe as well. Child-proofing is great and will help protect your child, but it’s important that your child also knows that they should not touch or play with certain things. There may come a time when something isn’t child-proofed (visiting another house, for instance) and we all know that as much as we try to watch our kids, we can’t keep our eyes on them every single second.

Providing healthy food is also another thing to be doing, and giving them a diet with balance and variety. Simple things that can make such a difference in the development and early years of your child.

Above all…

Above everything, the most important thing, is to just want what is best for your child. None of us will ever parent perfectly. It won’t happen. But the important thing is that you WANT to.

If you love your kids and want to be the best parent you can be, you’re doing great!

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